A Theory of Media That Explains 15 Years of Politics

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Government, News

4.6 • 11K Ratings

🗓️ 25 February 2025

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 2016, when Donald Trump won the first time, a little-known book became an unexpected phenomenon. It was “The Revolt of the Public,” self-published two years earlier by a former C.I.A. media analyst, Martin Gurri. Gurri, who is now a visiting research fellow at the Mercatus Center, argued that a revolution in how information flowed was driving political upheavals in country after country: The dynamics of modern media ecosystems naturally created distrust toward institutions and elites, and this was fueling waves of revolt against the status quo. The problem, though, was that though these dynamics could destroy existing political systems, they could not build enduring replacements. Gurri’s book has been on my mind over the past year. In some ways, it explains 2024 better than it explains 2016. But time didn’t just change Gurri’s book; it changed Gurri. After refusing to cast a ballot for president in 2016 and 2020, he voted for Donald Trump in 2024. And in his writing for The Free Press, The New York Post and elsewhere, he’s been arguing that Trump’s second term might herald the mastery of this new informational world and the emergence of an enduring new political system. I found myself more convinced by Gurri’s old theory than his new one. So I asked him on the show to talk about it. (Also: If you’re interested in joining Ezra Klein on his book tour in March and April, you can see the stops and get tickets for the events here: https://www.simonandschuster.com/p/abundance-tour) Book Recommendations: Postjournalism and the Death of Newspapers by Andrey Mir. Why Most Things Fail by Paul Ormerod Not Born Yesterday by Hugo Mercier Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Mixing by Isaac Jones, with Efim Shapiro and Aman Sahota. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Elias Isquith, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Switch and Board Podcast Studio.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Before we begin today, a quick announcement.
0:03.1	My book, Abundance, is coming out on March 18th.
0:05.6	It is available for pre-order now.
0:07.7	And we are also setting up the tour.
0:10.2	So we have a little link today in the show description to the tour page.
0:13.0	You can see if we are coming to a city near you, at least as of yet, there will be more stops on this to be added, and grab a ticket before they sell out.
0:21.0	So if you want to come join us in person, come check that out.
0:29.1	From New York Times opinion, this is the Ezra Klein Show.
1:08.8	Thank you. back in 2016, when Donald Trump won the first time, there was this book, it was self-published by a former CIA media analyst named Martin Gurry that became a kind of phenomenon in Silicon Valley. The book was called The Revolt of the Public. And what it did
1:12.3	was describe these informational dynamics. It described the way that politics was changing,
1:18.6	because media was changing, because media and information got from scarce to abundant.
1:23.3	And that had created constant recurrent crises for whoever was in power.
1:29.8	The ability to control a narrative was gone.
1:36.8	And in this world of fractured media, there's always an incentive and always an ability to show what was wrong with whoever was ruling.
1:40.2	And this was, Gurry argued, fundamentally unstable.
1:41.9	It knew how to destroy.
1:43.1	It did not know how to build.
1:46.1	Gurry has, in his own politics evolved.
1:51.4	He didn't vote in 2016 or 2020, but he voted for Trump in 2024, and he's become much more positive about Trump this time than the first time.
1:54.7	He's a visiting scholar at Mercatus, and he writes for the free press and discourse and
1:59.4	City Journal, among others.
2:00.8	I watched him come to the view that actually maybe Trump is building something more stable.
	...

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